My New Curate Part 6

Now, you may accuse us in Ireland of anything you please from coining to parricide, but if you don't want to see blazing eyes and hear vigorous language don't say, Dirt. Mrs. Darcy bore the fierce scrutiny of her menage without shrinking, but when he mentioned the ugly word, all her fury shot forth, and it was all the more terrible, because veiled under a show of studied politeness.

"Dirt!" she said. "I'd be plazed to see your reverence show one speck of dirt in the place."

"Good heavens, woman!" he said, "what do you mean? There is dirt everywhere, in the air, under my feet, in the grate, on the altar. It would take the Atlantic to purify the place."

"You're the first gentleman that ever complained of the place," said Mrs. Darcy. "Of coorse, there aren't carpets, and bearskins, and cowhides, which are now the fashion, I believe. An' dere isn't a looking-gla.s.s, nor a pianney; but would your reverence again show me the dirt. A poor woman's charackter is all she has."

"I didn't mean to impute anything to your character," he said, mildly, "but if you can't see that this place is frightfully dirty, I suppose I can't prove it. Look at that!"

He pointed to a grewsome heap of cinders, half-burnt papers, brown ashes, etc., that choked up the grate.

"Yerra. Glory be to G.o.d!" said Mrs. Darcy, appealing to an imaginary audience, "he calls the sweepings of the altar, and the clane ashes, dirt. Yerra, what next?"

"This next," he said, determinedly; "come here." He took her out and pointed to the altar cloth. It was wrinkled and grimy, G.o.d forgive me!

and there were stars of all sizes and colors darkening it.

"Isn't that a disgrace to the Church?" he said, sternly.

"I see no disgrace in it," said Mrs. Darcy. "It was washed and made up last Christmas, and is as clane to-day as the day it came from the mangle."

"Do you call that clean?" he shouted, pointing to the drippings of the candles.

"Yerra, what harm is that," said she, "a bit of blessed wax that fell from the candles? Sure, 't is of that they make the Agnus Deis."

"You're perfectly incorrigible," he said. "I'll report the whole wretched business to the parish priest, and let him deal with you."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Do you call that clean?"]

"Begor you may," said she, "but I'll have my story first."

And so she had. Father Letheby gave me his version afterwards. He did so with the utmost delicacy, for it was all an indirect indictment of my own slovenliness and sinful carelessness. I listened with shamed face and bent head? And determined to let him have his way. I knew that Mrs.

Darcy would not leave for America just yet.

But what was my surprise on the following Sunday, when, on entering the sacristy to prepare for Ma.s.s, I slid along a polished floor, and but for the wall would probably have left a vacancy at Kilronan to some expectant curate. The floor glinted and shone with wax; and there were dainty bits of fibre matting here and there. The grate was black-leaded, and there was a wonderful firescreen with an Alpine landscape. The clock was clicking steadily, as if Time had not stood still for us all for many years: and there were my little altar boys in snowy surplices as neat as the acolytes that proffered soap and water to the Archbishop of Rheims, when he called for bell and book in the famous legend.

But oh! my anguish when I drew a stiff white amice over my head, instead of the dear old limp and wrinkled one I was used to; and when I feebly tried to push my hands through the lace meshes of an alb, that would stand with stiffness and pride, if I placed it on the floor. I would gladly have called for my old garment; but I knew that I too had to undergo the process of the new reformation; and, with much agony, I desisted. But I drew the line at a biretta which cut my temples with its angles, and I called out:--

"Mrs. Darcy."

A young woman, with her hair all tidied up, and with a white ap.r.o.n, laced at the edges, and pinned to her breast, came out from a recess.

She was smiling bashfully, and appeared as if she would like to run away and hide somewhere.

"Mrs. Darcy," I called again.

The young woman smiled more deeply, and said with a kind of smirk:--

"Here I am, your reverence!"

It is fortunate for me that I have acquired, after long practice, the virtue of silence; for when I recognized the voice of my old friend, I was thunderstruck. I'm sure I would have said something very emphatic, but my habits restrained me. But I regret to say it was all a source of distraction to me in the celebration of the Divine Mysteries, and during the day. What had occurred? I was dying to know; but it would not be consistent with the dignity of my position to ask. To this day, I congratulate myself on my reticence; for, who could help asking how?

when face to face with a miracle. It was some days before I discovered the secret of the magical transformation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Here I am, your Reverence!" (p. 56.)]

It would appear, then, that the late lamented Jem Darcy, when he departed to his reward, left his poor widow two charges in the shape of children. What do I say? Charges? No. She would scornfully repudiate the word. For was not Patsey, the baby of eighteen months, "the apple of her eye," and Jemmy, the little hunchback of six summers, "the core of her heart"? For them she labored and toiled, and "moiled," as she used to say; and worked herself into oil to get them bread, and a pink ribbon for the baby's shoulder knot, and a navy cap, with "Hero" in gold letters for Jemmy. And across her troubled life, full of cares and apprehensions, poor soul! was there any gleam of sunshine, except that which was reflected in the iris of her baby's eyes; or that which dappled the mud floor of her cabin, when Jemmy lay there and played hide and seek with the gossamer threads that shone through the c.h.i.n.k in the half-door! Ah me! it is easy to lecture the poor, and complain of their horrid ways; but the love such as no man hath gilds and enamels most of the crooked and grimy things that disfigure their poor lives in the eyes of the fastidious; and perhaps makes the angels of Him, before whose Face the stars are not spotless, turn from the cold perfection of the mansion and the castle to gaze lovingly on the squalid lowliness of the hamlet and the cabin. Well. On the morning that Mrs. Darcy gave me formal notice of her relinquishment of the solemn office she held, she bent her steps homeward with a heavy heart. She had done her duty, like all the other great people who have done disagreeable things; but it brought no consolation. And she had flung behind her her little cabin, and all the sweet a.s.sociations connected therewith, and the pomp and pride of power, when she officiated at the public offices of the Church, and every one knew her to be indispensable. For who could tell the name of a defaulter at the station, but Mrs. Darcy? And who arranged the screaming baby in the clumsy arms of a young G.o.dmother, but Mrs. Darcy?

And who could lay out a corpse like Mrs. Darcy? And who but Mrs. Darcy found the ring when the confused and blushing bridegroom fumbled in every pocket at the altar, and the priest looked angry, and the bride ashamed?

And then her pride in the Church! How wonderful were her designs in holly and ivy at Christmas! What fantasies she wove out of a rather limited imagination! What art fancies, that would shame William Morris, poet and socialist, did she conceive and execute in the month of May for the Lady Altar! Didn't Miss Campion say that she was a genius, but undeveloped? Didn't Miss Campion's friend from Dublin declare that there was nothing like it in Gardiner Street? And when her time would be spent, and she was old and rheumatized, would not little Jemmy, the hunchback, who was a born pre-Raphaelite, take her place, and have a home, for he could not face the rough world? Ah me! and it was all gone; cast behind her through a righteous feeling of pride and duty. She moved through the village with a heavy heart; and her check ap.r.o.n went to her eyes.

She had an amiable habit of never entering her cabin without playing "Peek-a-boo!" through the window with the baby. For this purpose, the cradle was always drawn so that the baby faced the window; and when it saw the round face, which it knew so well, peeping over the speck blossoms of the mignonette, well--there were developments. On this particular morning, Mrs. Darcy was in no humor for playacting; but the force of habit is strong, and she peered through the little window with reddened eyes. And these eyes, as she afterwards described it, "sprod in her head" at what she saw. For, on the floor, in his favorite att.i.tude, his head propped between his hands, was the hunchback, Jemmy, studying with all the intense appreciation of an Edison, how to construct an airy castle out of certain painted wood-blocks, which strewed the floor; and there, his back turned towards the window, was her arch-enemy, Father Letheby, his right hand raised aloft and dangling an india-rubber baby; whilst Patsey, his eyes dilated with excitement, made frantic attempts to seize the prize, and crowed and chuckled in the exuberance of his delight. Mrs. Darcy drew back hastily, then peeped again. No doubt of it. It was no phantasm of the imagination. She looked again. Then whispered something softly to herself, and, with a great lump in her throat, sped swiftly through the village and up to the "Great House."

The result of her interview with Miss Campion we have seen. Father Letheby has scored again. There were heavy bets of fifteen to one in half-gallons of porter, laid by desperate gamblers, that Father Letheby would make Mrs. Darcy wash her face. It was supposed to be a wild plunge in a hopeless speculation. I am told now, that the betting has gone up at the forge, and is now fifty to one that, before a month, she'll have a lace cap and "sthramers" like the maids at the "Great House."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Saxon, linhay.]

CHAPTER VI

AT THE STATION

Captain Campion was one of that singular race of Catholics, with which Ireland was familiar fifty years ago, but which is now dying rapidly away under the new conditions and environments of our age. A strong, rough lot they were, with whom a word meant a blow; gentlemen every inch of them, who would die for the faith whose dogmas they knew nothing of, and whose commands they ignored. Often in the town and country clubs of Ireland strange things happened, of which the outer world heard nothing; for stewards are discreet, and managers imbibe the spirit of respectability from their superiors. But the walls could tell of wine gla.s.ses shattered, and billiard cues broken, and hot blows exchanged for a word about the Pope, or against the priests; it was a leap of hot flame, which died out in a moment, and they were gentlemen again. And the perfervid imagination of the Celt had invented some such heroism about Captain Campion,--particularly one brilliant achievement at a hunt, when he unhorsed with the b.u.t.t of his riding whip, and then cut and lashed an unfortunate young officer in the Lancers, who had dared say something about Bittra,--the "lovely Papist," who was toasted at the mess in distant Galway, and had set half the hunting men of the country wild with her beauty and her prowess. It may be supposed then that Captain Campion was not a practical Catholic. He came to Ma.s.s occasionally, where he fidgeted in his pew, and twisted and writhed under the sermon. He never went to Confession; not even to his Easter duty,--which prevented me from accepting the hospitalities which he freely proffered. There were other little circ.u.mstances which made me wish not to be too intimate. Whatever political opinions I held, and they were thin and colorless enough, were in direct antagonism to his.

He was a three-bottle Tory, who regarded the people as so many serfs, who provided laborers for his comfort, and paid him for the privilege of living on stony mountain or barren bog. The idea of their having any rights struck him as positively ludicrous. There was but one thing that had rights, and that was the fetish, property. Every attempt, therefore, to lift the people from that condition of serfdom he regarded as absolutely treasonable; and he was my chief opponent in any futile attempts I made to introduce some improvements into the wretched place.

And of course he was hated. There was hardly a family to whom he had not done an injury, for he pushed the law to savage extremes. He had evicted, and burnt down the deserted cottages; he had driven honest lads for some paltry act of poaching into criminal and dishonest courses; he had hara.s.sed the widow and unhoused the orphan; and every prayer that went up for the sweet face of his child was weighted with a curse for the savage and merciless father. He knew it, and didn't care. For there were plenty to fawn upon him and tell him he was quite right. Ah me! how the iron has sunk into our souls! Seven centuries of slavery have done their work well.

Bittra Campion sat in the large drawing-room, with the high, broad windows, that looked over a dun, brown moorland, to where the sea-line threw its clear curve athwart the sky. She was working quietly at some little garment for a poor peasant girl or half-clad boy in the mountains; but over her gentle and usually placid face stole a look of apprehension, as if a shadow of coming evil was thrown forward by the undefined future. Yet why should she fear, who hated no one, but poured her love abroad upon all? Ah, why? is it not upon the gentle and the kind that the hailstones of destiny beat oftenest, as if they felt that here, and not upon the rugged and the stern, their pitiless strength should succeed? From time to time, Bittra looked to the door, or paused in her work, to listen for a footstep. At last it came,--her father's heavy step, as he strode across the corridor, and the doors slammed behind him.

"All alone, mignonne," he said. "A penny, nay, a pound for your thoughts."

"Agreed, father," she said eagerly, "I want a pound rather badly just now."

"Some new idiot discovered in the hills," he said, "or some disreputable tramp with a good imagination. You shall have it, Bittra," he said, coming over, and gently stroking her hair. He looked down fondly upon her, and said, suddenly changing his voice:--

"I am hungry as a hawk, Bittra; would you get me some tea?"

She rose to meet his wishes, and as her tall, beautiful figure pa.s.sed from the room, he said to himself:--

"G.o.d, how like her mother!"

He threw himself on a sofa, and looked out over the moor. But he saw--

A long, low island, with the plumes of palms crowning the hill; and beneath, the white waves creeping up the coral crests to mingle with the lazy waters of the lagoon. A cottage, shaded with palms, close down by the beach, with magnolias cl.u.s.tering round the windows, and orchids far back in the moist shades, and creeping vines tangled in and out amongst the palms, and a strong sun, going down in an orange and crimson sky, and a cool, welcome breeze from the sea, that just lifts up the fans of the palms, and a stray curl on the forehead of a girl--for she was hardly more than a girl--who sat out on the tiny lawn, and at her feet the young naval officer, who had carried off his bride at the last season at the Castle and brought her here under southern skies, and believed that this was the world--and heaven. His ship lay at anchor on the eastern side; and here they were stationed for weeks, it may be for months, away from civilization and all its nuisances, and alone with Nature and the children of Nature, who came by degrees to love at least the gentle lady who was so kind to them and their brown babies. Alas for human happiness! One short year, and he was a widower, with the charge of a little babe.

"It was a bitter fate," he said to himself, "and I called her 'Bittra'

in my rage. I must change that name."